


You Won't Remember Me (When You Wake Up)

by DivineProjectZero



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Inception AU, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all a dream, until it isn't. Inception AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Won't Remember Me (When You Wake Up)

The ground trembles, just a moment, like the earth has shuddered under some unbearable weight setting foot on land. The sensations shoot up John's spine, crackles through his fingers. He stops and cranes his head about. 

"Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Sherlock takes another step before halting, waiting for John to catch up again. When John, still scanning the streets, makes no move to join him he huffs. "John, really, stop dithering."

John complies. Sherlock takes his hand. They walk side by side.

***

Later, the tips of John's fingers tingle with the memory of the earth shifting beneath his feet and John's vision blurs for the briefest of moments. He thinks of flying and running and crashing.

"I feel like I'm forgetting something," he confesses breathlessly.

"Obviously. All you need to remember is me," Sherlock growls into John's sweat-slick back and thrusts harder.

***

"Please," Molly chokes out, "you have to believe me."

Sherlock tugs John back by his jumper. John doesn't tell Sherlock to let go, though the thought crosses his mind. They are standing in front of Bart's and John doesn't dare look down at the ground. Doesn't dare look up at the rooftop. 

"You're a liar, Molly Hooper," John says. Molly cries harder at that.

Sherlock pulls on John's jumper more urgently, and John's mind frays at the edges like the yarn is coming all apart.

***

_There is a suitcase buried at the bottom of John's wardrobe. He vaguely remembers something about Sherlock muttering about secret government projects filched from Mycroft and decides to leave the thing well alone._

***

Lestrade catches John by the elbow, just the once, and asks him if he hasn't noticed anything strange.

"Strange?"

Sherlock is walking ahead and John wants to shake Lestrade off, follow Sherlock, never let him out of his sight.

"Don't you ever stand in a place and wonder how you got there?" Lestrade says urgently, his eyes sliding from John's face to Sherlock's retreating back. "Doesn't Sherlock seem different?" Donovan and Anderson are approaching from behind Lestrade. Their faces are blank.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

John tugs his arm away and runs. He doesn't look back to see the other police close in on Lestrade.

***

They've been in the shower for too long. John feels like he should leave before his skin prunes or the hot water runs out. He loses track of time.

"Don't leave me," Sherlock whispers and moans as John flicks his wrist to the left.

_You're the one who left_ , John doesn't say, swallowing the words back down. He bites into Sherlock's neck and promises to stay.

***

Mycroft is waiting for John in a building full of chandeliers and books. The entire place is empty. Sherlock is nowhere to be seen.

"This is much better than all those abandoned warehouses. Did you rent out the entire place for a chat?" John chuckles, but the unease sits on his shoulders and slides down his neck.

"I designed the entire place for this chat." Mycroft says, and it doesn't make sense at all. "Though I won't be able to keep him out for long, I reckon."

"Why keep him out?" John asks.

"Because he is fake," Mycroft answers. 

Anger, a forgotten hiss of blame, coils in the pit of John's stomach. The urge to scream at Mycroft is staggering. Everything inside John boils over in rage, the primal instinct honed to attack and defend.

"Don't you dare," John hisses as he points an accusing finger at Mycroft, "don't you fucking dare say that. Sherlock Holmes is not a fraud."

Mycroft taps the carpeted floor with his umbrella. "You are correct."

For a moment, John is taken aback. Then he narrows his eyes. "I don't know what you're playing at, but I don't want to play your games."

"We're playing yours," Mycroft corrects with uncharacteristic tenderness. "You've left us no choice but to follow your rules, and I am afraid we will lose. Our defeat is unacceptable, yet it seems inevitable. You are a complicated man, John Watson, and finding a person in their own head is difficult even with the simplest of minds."

"Please stop talking to me in riddles." 

The chandeliers begin to black out, one by one. With a sigh, Mycroft takes a step forward. "You should be aware that you can fall into the deepest dreams within dreams, and still he will follow you to the end of your world. You will be found, wherever you go, however far you fall. He is very clever."

"Nobody could be that clever," John says and then feels the ground tremble. The last chandelier flickers.

Mycroft smiles. "You know that's not quite true."

***

Sherlock presses John against the kitchen counter, kisses him languid and slow.

221B smells like sulfur and John can't remember how on earth he came back home. 

***

Sherlock is still in the elevator when John is pulled back out right as the doors close. 

"What the hell?" John growls. The unfamiliar woman releases his shirt collar and he turns more fully, to glare at her properly. "Who are you?"

She looks to be about in her late forties, with short red hair windswept and coat in need of a good wash. She hands John a piece of paper. "A message from Mr. Holmes."

The elevator chimes at the fourth floor. 

"Which one?" John asks, because the homeless network does not work for the British Government.

The woman smiles and turns away at the sound of Sherlock pounding down the stairs. She pulls out a familiar Blackberry from her pocket and starts typing as she walks away. John's heart pounds to the beat of her heels clicking on concrete.

"What happened?" Sherlock is irritated, hardly out of breath despite having run down four flights of stairs. 

John doesn't say anything about the not-homeless-network who might be not-Anthea. Instead, he redirects Sherlock's attention and opens up the paper while Sherlock is distracted and across the room. 

Sherlock's handwriting says  _keep your secret safe._

***

John shoves his dog tags in-between the sofa cushions before Sherlock strips off John's shirt. After he fucks Sherlock into oblivion, he takes the dog tags out and keeps them hidden. He can't explain why.

***

It happens without warning.

John comes back from Tesco and someone is strangling Sherlock in 221B's living room. Fury washes through John's veins and he knocks back the intruder, punches him as hard as he can and in the ensuing struggle lands halfway on the other man. Sherlock is somewhere behind him, wheezing and groaning on the floor, and John's rage turns cold when he gets a good look at who he is straddling.

Sherlock looks up at him, wide-eyed and pale-faced. 

"What," John begins and then fails to continue. He sits there, one fist still clenching the front of Sherlock's shirt and the other raised halfway in an aborted attack, and God, what is going on?

There is the sound of Sherlock slowly coming to his senses behind John, and the Sherlock pinned underneath John tenses. This Sherlock, too thin and too desperate, wraps a hand around John's wrist, the one still grabbing his shirt, and squeezes.

"John," Sherlock says, his baritone wrecked, "Your secret. Is it still there?"

***

_They call it their secret. Their totem. Their one special thing that nobody else is supposed to know about. When John first joins Sherlock and opens the suitcase, he knows for sure that this is something not even Sherlock can deduce, the way the words etched into metal contort and change according to his desires, because even though he's a genius he is ignorant of how much John truly_ wants _._

***

The ground trembles and splits in two. John's fingers are steady as they smooth over the surface of his dog tags. 

What is written there is not his name, but Sherlock's.

***

_In 221B, there is a suitcase open with a contraption inside. Glass vials, empty of chemicals mixed in Bart's and carried in Molly's bag, are now scattered on the kitchen table. In Sherlock's room, Lestrade sleeps, leaning against the wall, and Molly leans against his shoulder. Anthea curls at their feet in a fetal position on the floor. Mycroft is propped against the foot of the bed, his face stern even in sleep._

_On the bed, John lays under the covers, face lined and weary in his slumber. Beside him, above the covers, lays Sherlock, asleep on his side towards John with his hands encasing his flatmate's._

***

The world tilts. 

***

_Mrs. Hudson comes in at the scheduled three-hour waking to find Sherlock already awake, his forehead pressed to John's and his voice breaking as he says John's name._

_She remembers coming into the room a month after the funeral and finding John, who didn't wake up. Who won't wake up._

_Lestrade and Molly stir and Anthea's hand twitches._

_John doesn't open his eyes._

_"Wake up." Sherlock begs. "Please, wake up."_

_***_

The world is crumbling and Sherlock says, "Don't go."

John smiles, and for the first time he knows where he's going and how he's going to get there.

"I'll never leave you," John says. "I'll always follow you."

He jumps off the roof of Bart's.

***

_In 221B, John stops dreaming._

**Author's Note:**

> I want Lestrade as point-man, Mycroft as architect, Molly as chemist, Anthea as forger, and Sherlock as whatever Dom Cobb is supposed to be as they perform an Inception on John. Obviously, I do not have the skill to pull that off, so this is what I wrote instead.
> 
> Also published on my tumblr.


End file.
